Out of the Labyrinth

We’re in a strategic planning session at a multinational corporation. It could be Starbucks, Nike, McDonald’s, Ford, BP, Citicorp, or any of a hundred other companies. It’s a fictional enterprise, though Big Idea, Inc, which is the world’s leading corporate proponent of deep strategy. The subject is a very vexing problem: the low esteem in which Big Idea and other global corporations are held, and what to do about it.

The company’s Senior Vice President for Communication launches the discussion by telling her colleagues that public distrust of corporations is hovering near all-time highs. She quotes a 2002 USA Today article: “[T]rust in Corporate America is in shambles & In the past nine months, the percentage of Americans who see Big Business as an actual threat to the nation’s future has nearly doubled, to 38%. She cites a landmark 2000 Business Week survey, in which 72 percent of respondents agreed that business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life, while 74 percent believed that corporations did a “poor” or “only fair” job of “being straightforward and honest in their dealings with consumers and employees.” She quotes from Business Week’s cover story: “[C]itizens feel uneasy about Big Business. The growing political issue is one that companies ignore at their peril.”

In addition to all this passive resentment, the Senior Vice President continues, there is considerable active resistance in the form of the worldwide antiglobalization movement, which has spawned massive demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. A boycott of ExxonMobil, widely viewed as the chief corporate architect behind the campaign to delay action on climate change, built up enough momentum to compel the company to issue a statement that its business hadn’t been affected, no, really, not at all. Now growing global anti-Americanism was beginning to make its mark as well, with a new venture called Mecca Cola threatening to take a sizable chunk of business away from Coca-Cola in Muslim countries.

There is also cause for concern on the judicial front, the Senior Vice President notes, where there has been a marked increase in attempts to hold companies, and in some cases entire industries, liable for the indirect consequences of their actions. Inspired by the enormous damages imposed on Big Tobacco, people are targeting other industries as well. In the United States, the gun industry has come, so to speak, under the gun, with some thirty lawsuits filed by various agencies and organizations. State and local governments have sued paint manufacturers, maintaining that they should be held liable for the learning and behavioral problems often suffered by lead-poisoned children. Lately, the food and beverage industry has started to feel the heat as well. Fearful of being held liable for the impacts of obesity on human health, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and other companies have launched preemptive publicity campaigns urging consumers to straighten up and eat right.

Nor does the game of “pin-the-responsibility-on-the-corporation” show any sign of stopping there. It has even been speculated that oil companies may eventually be held liable for the damage caused by climate change.

The Senior Vice President then poses a question: Why are corporations generating so much hostility? Because they have the money and the power, she suggests, which always produces resentment along with admirationbut the reasons run deeper than that. And with that she turns the presentation over to the newly hired Vice President for Deep Strategy.

Things are going in the wrong direction, this gentleman says, and people know it. The environment is deteriorating and the social fabric is unraveling. Things seem increasingly out of control.

When things go wrong, people need someone to blame. Corporations make a ready target for this, and in fairness it must be said that to some degree they have earned it. The record is replete with examples of appalling corporate misdeeds, from raiding the till to jeopardizing workers to devastating entire ecosystems. Corporations have also been implicated in the breakdown of our democratic system, not through criminal activity but through the legally mandated right to supportokay, buypolitical candidates. And this is something people understandably resent.

In addition, corporations are on the receiving end of enormous amounts of redirected rage. As discussed elsewhere in this book, the “tyranny of the objective,” a mental model that focuses on achieving one’s goals as quickly and efficiently as possible through left-brained strategizing while excluding considerations of meaning and much else that matters, is dragging the world into the abyss. At a level beneath conscious awareness, people sense this, if only because their inner lives are being disrupted, too. And so, along with all the other more straightforward reasons for being unhappy with corporations, people resent them because they are proxies for a set of values and attitudes that is widely if unconsciously viewed as responsible for much of what’s wrong with the world.

A second intuition is operating here too, the Vice President for Deep Strategy continues. With the advent of globalization, the concept of the “global family” has made the transition from sentimental metaphor to something much closer to reality. And this global family is wildly dysfunctional. Without being able to articulate the situation in so many words, people know this to be the case, and they hold big business accountable.

How can a corporation even begin to respond to this unfortunate state of affairs? By addressing the dysfunctionality, that’s how. By taking responsibility for the system in which they are complicit.

There are well-established rules for addressing dysfunctionality, he continues, and they apply regardless of the size or nature of the system. First, since dysfunctionalities derive their strength from collectively held secrets, those secrets must be raised up and exposed to the light of day. Secrets lose their power to the extent that they are named.

Second, the beneficiaries of the dysfunctionality must disavow the system that’s been supporting them and voluntarily commit to make things better. For example, if the dysfunctional system in question is a family protecting an alcoholic parent, the parent must admit to their dependency, else all is to no avail. He or she must rise to the intervention.

Corporatio
ns are the global equivalent of the alcoholic parent. It is they who for a century or more have buttressed and benefited from the tyranny of the objectivethis is why they are so powerful and wealthy. They are the Big Daddy, or at least a Big Daddy, in our global dysfunctional family. Until they assume a leadership role in addressing the crisis in which they are so deeply implicated, the system is destined to remain at a standstill, spinning its wheels and grinding down the world.

It is too late for corporations to initiate the conversation, which has long since been launched by the antiglobalization movement. But there is nothing stopping them from assuming a leadership role in addressing the dysfunctionalities that are forging our contemporary wasteland.

How might this play out?, the Vice President for Deep Strategy asks, and promptly answers his own question. One possibility might be for Big Idea and other forward-thinking corporations to convene a Commission on Global Dysfunctionality with participation from all the major governance sectors, with a view toward collectively designing ways to effectively address the global sustainability crisis. One outcome of this process might be a commitment to mitigation strategiesevery time a global company opens a store somewhere, it contributes to a fund supporting locally owned retail enterprises in that same area. Another might be corporate-sponsored educational programs warning people about the dangers of consumerism, much as food and beverage companies have started cautioning people about the dangers of unhealthy food.

Combine these with other forward-thinking strategies, and the result could be a nonviolent revolution, brought about by a collaborative process that had been spearheaded by the proactive readiness of a few bold corporations to work at a deep-structural level on behalf of the greater good.

One of Big Idea’s most conventional thinkers raises his hand. “I don’t get this at all,” he says. “When you’re in power, you have to hang onto that power! You can’t relinquish it voluntarily! That’s the way the game’s been played for the last ten thousand years, and that’s how it will be played for the next ten thousand years, too! Plus which, you have to remember that Big Idea is a corporation, not a do-good social organization. We have a legal duty to maximize return to investors. How is a strategy based on your “enlightened commitment” going to deliver that? What’s the business case for this?”

“There’s a considerable competitive advantage to be gained here,” the Vice President for Deep Strategy replies. “In these anxiety-inducing times, people are desperate for leadershipand not what passes for leadership, not the leadership that recycles the truisms of the tyranny of the objective, but true leadership, leadership that is committed to righting imbalances and creating harmony at the deep-structural level. What a golden opportunity this leadership deficit offers to companies with the foresight and courage to seize the opportunity!

“Imagine how wide the differentiation will be,” he continues,”between conventional companies and the handful of corporations that are prepared to step forward in this way. Conventional companies will continue to be widely perceived as the purveyors of a worldview that has been largely discredited by virtue of its association with the tyranny of the objective. Leadership companies will be viewed as rescuers, come from out of nowhere to save the day. If I were to ask you, “Would you rather have your customers view you as friend or foe?” the answer would be obvious, right? If, then, I were to ask you: “Would you rather have your customers view you as foe or hero?” the answer would be even more obvious, no? And how could stepping into the hero’s role not create a sizable competitive advantage over conventional companies?

“Just as there is an upside to taking action, there is also a downside to not doing so,” the Vice President for Deep Strategy continues. “Humanity will continue to drift toward the abyss, and corporations will risk a considerably more virulent backlash. When things go wrong, people seek out scapegoats. Sometimes it is the powerless that are on the receiving end of their rage, but just as often it is the powerful. Sacrificing the king is a primal cultural ritual, undertaken for millennia to preserve the cycle of the seasons and the social order. In our de-natured world, there is no better “king” or target for scapegoating than the multinational corporation.”

The Vice President for Deep Strategy concludes with a brief story. “You all surely remember,” he says, the advertising campaign that launched our company on the road to success. “What’s the Big Idea?” the slogan went and the “Big Idea” was this company. You will also recall how that slogan was turned against us by antiglobalization activists. “What’s the Big Idea?” legions of their banners stated, spinning the slogan into a declaration of moral outrage. Now we come to a third type of “Big Idea,” the possibility that this company could claim a position of “deep leadership” in our global family, and gain a significant competitive advantage in the process.”

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